Help me out here. Why are Catholics so emotionally vested in a language that not one in ten of them can speak? Maybe it's just my protestant sensibilities, but I don't get the attraction to a service in a language you don't understand. Can someone explain this to me?
The missals were printed with one side in Latin and the other in the vernacular. It made for a Universal Mass, where anyone could attend Mass, and understand it be looking at the Missal.
Jews has services in Hebrew, do you fault that?
I'll try and help.
1. I'm not sure if you come from a liturgical or non-liturgical protestant background but if it is a liturgical one then you know that many part of the liturgy are the same week after week. These become so familiar that you pretty much know what is happening even if you don't understand a word. I had this very experience in a Polish mass once.
2. Church Latin is failry easy to pick up, but easier for children than adults.
3. There is a sense of that something really special is going on when using a liturgical language, something that is not common.
4. The missals have a page by page English or vernacular translation on the page next to the Latin
5. Continuity. When using the pre-1970 rite you are worshipping near exactly as your anscestors did for atleast 500, probably 1500 years
6. The sermon and Gospel are read in English because as easy as it is to pick up the fixed parts in Latin, learning enough to translate a sermon would be something few in the pews could do.
Hope that helps.
There is much to be said FOR the concepts of: 1) sacred time, 2) sacred space, 3) sacred ritual, and 4) sacred language.
That's really the "hidden" part of the debate, but you've likely noticed the posts which demonstrate that the RC's Latin is hardly unique in formal worship.
As I once tried to explain to a notorious lefty on one of the threads: Latin (like the other 'sacred' items above) establishes a 'fence' around the prize. One may or may not need the fence, but one doesn't want to endanger the prize with imprudence.
The same concept applies to the "old days" rules about priestly conduct: always live in the rectory, NEVER go out without a priest-companion, curfew, MUST wear clerics, (the list goes on.)
Now, a zillion dollars later, some have figured out that those nasty old disciplines may actually have had utility.
I don't know, why are Christians attracted to a God they can never fathom? Latin is found on on the cross of the Savior, contains mystery which rewards those who bother to fathom it and is immutable. In this fashion, it seems to partake in form with things eternal.
I am attached to the Latin Tridentine Mass and do
understand it. Most people in the 1960's did!
Many reasons for the attachment have been already posted,
however I have not seen anyone mention that with Latin,
you could go to any Catholic church in the world and
understand what was going on. Now that universality is
gone.